“I’m Part of This”: Martha Coolidge Discusses Her Early Metacinema ‘Not a Pretty Picture’

Martha Coolidge made her mark in Hollywood directing films like Valley Girl, Real Genius, and Rambling Rose, but before all that, she was breaking ground with reenactment in documentary decades before most other filmmakers broached such high concepts. Her 1976 debut feature Not a Pretty Picture sees her recreate a date rape she suffered in high school, and cuts between this film within a film and the discussions she holds with the actors about the experience, drawing out their thoughts and personal experiences within this issue. 

The film went under the radar for decades before being brought to renewed attention after the Academy Film Archive and Film Foundation restored it in 2022, leading to a brief theatrical run and its induction into the Criterion Collection this year. Ahead of the home media release of Not a Pretty Picture (which includes as a bonus feature Coolidge’s 1974 short Old-Fashioned Woman, a biography of her grandmother), we spoke with Coolidge over the phone about her time as a documentarian, her memories of making the film, and how reactions to it have changed over the years. This interview has been edited and condensed for time and clarity.

DOCUMENTARY: Could you tell me about one of your earliest documentaries, David: Off and On (1972)?

Martha Coolidge: That was my first serious documentary. My brother was in an institution at the time. It was a huge portion of my life, my love for him and concern for him. I had gone and found him in Haight-Ashbury and brought him back [to the East Coast]. He did recover and he’s a great guy now, he’s terrific. But I did promise him later that I would keep the distribution of the film to a minimum, because he didn’t want his children and other people to know about that part of his life.

D: Did making that film about your brother naturally lead to your next short, Old-Fashioned Woman (1974), about your grandmother?

MC: Oh, it did, because it made me think of her. I took a camera and shot all the relatives going to my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving, and it was great. I really loved my grandmother, and it was a great way to look at my family and the huge changes taking place at that time.

D: Was she cooperative and natural in the presence of the crew?

MC: My crew was made up of people I’d gone to school with and others I knew around New York. We stayed there with her. She kept telling people I was practicing filmmaking on her [laughs]. But she was the wife of a lieutenant governor [Arthur W. Coolidge of Massachusetts], so I’m sure she was quite used to being interviewed, and she was very good at it. 

D: She expresses some forward-thinking ideas about topics like relationships and abortion. What did she think of Not a Pretty Picture?

MC: I can’t remember. I must have shown it to her… It’s been a long time. But she was so supportive of me, so I’m sure she was accepting of it. She was a very active Republican, just like my grandfather. But Republicans were very different then. She believed in the separation of church and state and in women controlling their own decisions. That clip of her opinions about abortion is in Old-Fashioned Woman because I felt it was nice to have a person of her generation saying those things.

D: As I understand it, you were inspired to make Not a Pretty Picture by a film you saw at the Flaherty Seminar? 

MC: Yes. We saw No Lies (1973), a short film [by Mitchell Block] about a woman who’s been raped and comes home and talks to a cameraman and describes it. It was very provocative and effective, but having been a rape victim myself, I thought, “Well, I have things that I could add to this that are missing.” It came to me that the informal way the cameraman interviewed that actress was more integral to rehearsing with actors. I got this idea that I should do a film about my own rape that included a documentary about making it. That might make it more exploratory and encourage people to speak, rather than encourage them to be excited about being inside the action of the event.

D: Since the film’s concept was so novel, was there any difficulty obtaining funding from the NEA and other sources, with getting people to see the vision? Was there any controversy around the subject matter?

MC: There was a lot of controversy, but not when I was raising the funds. I got money from my grandmother, friends, hairdressers, people I knew who had invested in other documentaries, and the National Endowment for the Arts and the AFI. I made the whole film for around $56,000. 

Early on, some viewers did ask the questions. “She was wearing a dress and she was drinking, didn’t that mean she was inviting the rape?” “Is rape a fantasy of a lot of women?” “Is it part of being a woman that you just are vulnerable to being raped?” There were still all those questions back then, but they don’t come up like that anymore. They really don’t. There’s way more open understanding on people’s part about what rape is and that it exists now. It’s simply not as controversial as it used to be.

People are far more interested in discussing the issue of rape, and the pain, and what it does to people. And after I’d finished the film, I heard from men about being raped, something I hadn’t really thought about. But it can be an extremely painful experience because they really can’t talk about it. I’m very glad this film is being rereleased, it’s very exciting. And the discussions are terrific.

D: There’s a notable shot in the film of you watching the reenactment of the assault. Was making the film emotionally fraught in any way? Has it been difficult to rewatch this recreation of a traumatic, personal event?

MC: Actually, that has not been a problem. I’d had to deal with it for so many years in therapy, and by the time I made the film, it had been years. I really haven’t had trouble coping with it. My cameraman, Don Lenzer, had great instincts. He said, “You know I’m going to put the camera on you,” before that scene, and I said, “Oh please, you must. I’m part of this.” He captured those great, revealing moments.

D: Was that how it worked logistically—you’d discuss how to shoot the parts with the actors, and then discuss how to do the scenes with the actors themselves? How did you find Lenzer for the role?

MC: I knew Don in the New York filmmaking scene, and I’d seen tons of movies that he’d shot. I wanted someone with his gifts to shoot the loft scene, which would have to be handheld. I went to him, even though I didn’t know him that well, and offered to have him shoot that part of the film. And Fred Murphy, who shot the rest of the film, I went to RISD with him, and I’d known him for years. He and many of my friends I went to school with were on the crew.

Because Don was experienced with handheld and documentary footage, we discussed the whole approach privately prior to the rehearsal. This guy’s got a camera on his back the whole day, that’s hard. He used his own judgment on when to go to me; he’s the kind of a guy who can see what’s really going on and make judgments about who to pan to.

D: Is there any other documentary work you’ve done that you’d like to see restored? To say nothing of your fiction?

MC:  Because I’ve been around for a while, half of the films I’ve made are simply not available. And that’s disturbing to a filmmaker. It’s sad. With everything that gets restored and rereleased, it’s made me want to go buy many of my old films, but I can’t afford to do that. So it’s a dilemma, shall we say. Given that, it’s fantastic that Not a Pretty Picture is out there.

D: The restoration was done with your personal negative?

MC: Well, I have a lot. I have my negatives, everything in storage. I just have always been like that. With Old-Fashioned Woman, I had lost somehow the soundtrack. So they had to recreate that, which was great.

D: After Not a Pretty Picture, you boarded American Zoetrope, moved to the West Coast, and despite the great career you’ve had in the decades since, you never returned to documentary. Did you ever feel the pull of nonfiction again?

MC: There were, there were times. Even my latest idea is a semi-documentary. It’s just that I would have to go to Russia to shoot, and the Ukrainian situation is not conducive to that. To me, the idea is what’s important, the story. What am I doing, what am I saying, and how do I need to say it? This question of fiction and non-fiction, that’s all of the things that I think filmmakers are playing with today.

Dan Schindel is a freelance critic and full-time copy editor living in Brooklyn. He has previously worked as the associate editor for documentary at Hyperallergic.